


Uathúil

by imaginentertain



Series: Divinus [2]
Category: Emmerdale
Genre: M/M, and the nature of Robert and Aaron's relationship, basically just an excuse for me to play in this sandpit again, exploration of what it means to be Divinus, one shot within the Rumours 'verse, when Robert and Aaron are at the Community
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-03-16 23:54:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13647066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginentertain/pseuds/imaginentertain
Summary: While at the Community in Ireland Robert gets the chance to explore what it means to be a Divinus: what it means for this life and all lives, and more importantly what it means for his relationship with Aaron.  Turns out there are rumours within the Divinus Community itself.





	Uathúil

**Author's Note:**

> This is a stupidly late birthday fic for Sara. I don't think there's a bigger fan of "Rumours" than her and so what could I do other than write something else in that 'verse for her? Happy (belated) birthday, darling. Much love - Divinus style.

"We should get up," Aaron said. "Ciarán will be expecting you."

"Would you... I mean only if it's possible, but... would you come with me one day? I want you to know what's going on."

"Not sure what I could do." More rain pattering against glass and concrete and water. The boiler whirred into action, trying to heat up the house. "But if you want me there, I'll come."

Robert kissed Aaron's head again, then actually whined as Aaron started to pull away from him. Aaron felt Robert's eyes on him as he threw back the covers and pulled on a pair of boxers before throwing a grin over his shoulder.

"We have too much to be getting on with, Sugden," he warned. "Do I need to lock the bathroom door?"

"Probably a good idea," Robert grinned, "I don't know if I can control myself."

 

 

It took a couple more days before Aaron took up the invitation. He didn’t need the bond to feel the nerves rolling off Robert in the car as they made the short drive back to Ciarán's house.

"You OK?" Aaron asked.

"Yeah," Robert said.

"Liar."

"No, I am, it's just…"

"Just what?"

Robert sighed and said nothing more so Aaron pulled off the road and pulled on the handbrake.

"Ciarán asked if you could come today."

"So?"

"So I hadn't had the chance to ask. This is his idea, not mine."

Aaron pressed his lips together and drew a long breath through his nose. "OK."

"I just… I don't know what to expect. Why you need to be there."

"You said that some of the things you and him have done have meant that he's seen things, felt stuff you have?" When Robert nodded so did Aaron. "Maybe he felt that you wanted me there."

"Maybe."

"What are you worried about?"

"I'm not worried."

"You're a terrible liar," Aaron said. When Robert grinned and raised his eyebrows Aaron laughed. "Well, with me you are."

"I can't," Robert said softly, his hand drifting to Aaron's where it rested on the handbrake. "I just… Can't."

"I know," Aaron said, his fingers moving a little so that they hooked over Robert's.

"He wants me to understand what it means to be a Divinus, beyond abilities and intuition and all the rumours. And he wants you there."

"I guess I should know too," Aaron said. "When I've talked to the others, the wives and husbands, they've told me that the more I understand what it's like for you the stronger our marriage will be."

"Aaron Dingle, talking about marriage," Robert said with a half-laugh. "What happened to the hard man, straight talking, give-no-shit grease monkey mechanic I fell for?"

"He's still here," Aaron said with a playful tap on the back of Robert's hand, "and he will make you suffer if you keep this up."

"Better stay on your good side then. Can't be upsetting my husband before we actually get married."

"Especially if you want to live long enough to make it to the wedding." There was a moment, a beat, a comfortable silence which seemed to settle into the very core of them both. "You ready?" Aaron asked as he was distracted by a car racing past them.

Robert nodded, unseen by Aaron but felt instead.

 

 

The woman standing next to Ciarán was the one who walked down the drive to meet them, her feet balancing on the cattle grid with an ease that only came from living a life in the country. "I'm Margaret," she said, holding out a hand to Robert first. "Ciarán has told me so much about you."

"You're Divinus too?" Robert asked, more out of logic than any kind of recognition.

"I am," she said, her smile and softer Irish lilt clearly designed to put him – them at ease. "Aaron, yes?"

Aaron nodded, taking her offered hand, then unconsciously falling back into place beside Robert. "So, what's on the lesson plan for today?" he asked.

"Nothing either of you need to worry about, really," she said, turning and heading up the drive.

"So why the reinforcements?" Robert asked as they approached Ciarán.

"Because Meg is better at this than I am," Ciarán said, "and it's easier with more than one of us."

"What is?" Robert asked, his fingers stretching out by his side.

When they brushed against the fabric against Aaron's hip it helped to still him, ground him a little more, but he was never fully conscious of what he was doing or why. Ciarán and Margaret, however, noticed and understood.

"There's more to being a Divinus than what we can do," Ciarán said. "It's also where we come from."

"I don't understand," Aaron said, "and I don't know why I need to be here."

"You're here because you want to know, and you should know," Margaret said, "but also because having you here will make it easier for Robert to explore that part of him that is bigger than anything he could have ever imagined."

"Do they teach you these riddles as you become part of the Divinus Community," Aaron quipped, "or is just something that comes naturally?"

"Sometimes there aren't words," Ciarán said. "You can't put into words how you feel about each other and so when you accidentally bonded it helped you understand a little more, yes? Well this is the same."

"So we're going to… bond?" Robert asked.

"In a manner of speaking," Margaret said. "Come on. I'm parched and I need a cup of tea before we begin."

 

 

Aaron had imagined them sitting on cushions or bean bags in a circle, holding hands while incense burned in a corner and something claiming to be music drifted out from a little speaker. Instead they were sat in the living room, Aaron and Robert on the sofa, Margaret and Ciarán on chairs facing them.

"So… how does this work?" Aaron asked.

"Usually I talk, Robert listens, and we let our minds do the rest," Ciarán said. "But today needs to be a little different."

"Close your eyes," Margaret said to Robert. When he did so she turned to Aaron. "Take his hand and don't let go."

Robert's eyes flew open. "Why would he let go?"

"It won't hurt, it's not going to do either of you any harm," Margaret said quickly. "You're going to be drawing strength and comfort from Aaron, same as you do any other time, and keeping that physical contact just means that you will have a steady stream of love and support while you're… exploring."

"Exploring what?"

"I can't really answer that. It's different for everyone. Now, close your eyes and just listen."

Aaron's gaze fixed on Robert's face, hyperaware of every flicker and movement and micro expression on his face. The placement of every freckle, the line of every eyelash, the groves on his lips. Every part of Robert was as familiar and clear to Aaron as it always had been and he resolved that the second it changed was the second this was over.

 

 

Robert knew this road. No. He didn't. It was familiar but not quite what he was used to. It looked like the road up to the farm but when he looked around him it wasn't the rolling hills of the Dales that he saw: buildings from Spain, from London, various other places that he knew he knew but couldn't name right now were all dotted around, nestled among the hills and the green as if they had always been there.

There was a bird, somewhere, but its chirp wasn't quite right.

"Oo-hu," it seemed to say. "Oo-hu."

Robert started walking, his feet moving unconsciously in one direction without any real reason or understanding as to why he was going that way. He only knew that that this was the way he was meant to go.

The road looped around and immediately a house came into view. A home.

 

 

Aaron was staring at the same house, the empty road stretching out towards and beyond it. The bird, calling somewhere in the distance, and a sense that he wasn't here by himself. Somewhere here, somewhere else, Robert was standing on this road, looking at this house. This was his vision, his dream, and somehow Aaron was sharing it with him.

His feet – Robert's feet – started moving towards the house but then the road started to turn away from them and the world turned under their feet. A new road stretched out ahead of them, and Aaron (or was it Robert?) looked back at the home that was now behind them before they continued on the road.

The field to their left wasn't Robert's doing, Aaron knew that. He knew every dip and cut within the turf that he'd first played football on when he was six and innocent and unaware of the life that was awaiting him.

"I'm sorry," Aaron heard Robert say.

"Don't be," Aaron replied to the wind.

The bird chirped in the distant tree. "Oo-hu."

There was a gap in the hedge and their feet moved towards the pitch, suddenly alive with the sounds of children's voices. Boys neither of them knew, girls they thought they recognised. Faces that seemed as obvious and unfamiliar as any could be.

And they knew them all by heart.

The field turned under their feet, like a wheel on some '90s game show, and there was the road again, the same home at the end of it.

"I don't understand," Robert's voice came on the wind. "This was supposed to be about me. About what it means to be Divinus."

"It is," Aaron said. His feet moved down the road. "That home, that's you."

"Us."

"All these roads, all these places you know—"

"We know," Robert corrected.

"—it's your life."

"Our life. You're as much a part of it now as I am. You are my life, Aaron."

"Now."

"Always."

"It keeps changing," Aaron said. "Why?"

The bird chirped again. "Oo-hu."

"I don't know."

 

 

Robert felt Aaron in the wind as it wrapped around him and he couldn't help but smile, feel comfort and warmth in the presence that it brought him. Then, without little warning, it went cold as his thoughts changed.

"Don't," Aaron's voice came.

"I don't want any home without you."

"I know," Aaron said. "But we will have one. You and me. A whole life and a home and everything that comes with it."

"And after?" Robert asked. In front of them the road split, roads turning into roads, all of them twisting away from them. "This. This is what I have to live, isn't it? This is what it means for me to be a Divinus."

Aaron saw the roads, felt every one of them as well as he knew the one they were standing on. This life, their life, and all the lives that Robert had had, would have, all stretching out from this one.

"All these lives, Aaron. I'm not the same as you, my soul isn't the same."

"You don't know that," Aaron said.

"Don't I?"

"None of us know what's coming after."

"Whatever it is I won't have you, will you?"

Aaron stopped on the road, feeling a slight tug as Robert was pulled to a stop as well. "Don't."

"Look around you, Aaron. This is my life. These places… Everywhere I've ever lived."

At the end of the road the home came into view.

"This is ours. This has to be our home. All the roads lead back here, to you and us. You're my home."

"What does this have to do with you being a Divinus?" Aaron asked. "How am I caught up in all this?"

"I don't know," Robert said.

 

 

No matter the road they walked down they always ended up outside the same home. Some of the roads were paved, smooth, and their feet travelled through the countryside with ease. Some of the roads needed upkeep and they tripped more than once. A road was impassable and no matter how hard they tried the home was always out of reach.

They talked, they said nothing, they listened to the wind and the single bird chirping away.

And all the time their feet walked the same path.

 

 

Aaron's eyes opened and he immediately turned to Robert. His eyes were still closed, his breathing was slow and settled. Aaron's hand reached out to Robert, his fingertips resting gently on Robert's knee. At the contact Robert's eyes flickered open, falling onto Aaron's face by instinct.

"Hey," Aaron said quietly. "You OK?"

"…Confused," Robert said. "I thought I was… I don't know what that was."

"That was you," Margaret said.

"All those roads—"

"There's more to us than this life," Ciarán said. "Our souls, who we are… We don't believe in the same as non-Divinus."

"There were so many of them," Aaron said. When he noticed Margaret and Ciarán were looking at him he shrugged. "I saw it too."

"Those roads are your lives, every single one. Some of them will be hard, some easier."

"The home… Aaron," Robert said, his hand finding the one on his knee. "He was there."

"Home is what you make it," Margaret said, "it doesn't have to mean anything."

"But it does," Robert said. "I know. I feel it."

"Then it means something," Ciarán said.

"So what is it? Reincarnation or something?"

"Maybe," Ciarán said. "We all go through this, all experience our own place in the Divinus universe. Our abilities come from more than just our bodies, our… souls. We share what we can do with others: past, present, even future. What you see and what you experience just proves that there is more to us than the here and now. Many of our ceremonies draw strength from those around us. Those we care about."

"So is that why I saw it too? Why I was there?" Aaron asked.

"You've shared my feelings before," Robert said.

"I wish we had all the answers," Ciarán said. "I know that's what you came here for, and I will give you all the ones I have, but this… This moment, this experience, it's beyond most of our understanding. But you get it."

"Yeah," Robert said. "I think I do."

"Think I do too," Aaron said quietly. 

"We'll let you two have a moment," Ciarán said, holding out his hand to help Margaret up and then they were gone.

"You were there," Robert said. "You weren't supposed to be. It was supposed to be me, my life." He gave a small smile, leaning in to press his forehead against Aaron's. "But then you are my life. My home."

"We didn't always make it to the home," Aaron said quietly.

"But you were always with me."

 

 

Outside the room Margaret was helped into a chair by Ciarán.

"Never gets easier," she said as she reached for the glass of water they'd set out in anticipation. "But you were right."

"I've always thought they were just… rumours," Ciarán said with a slight laugh. "Never thought I'd live long enough to see one myself."

"Trust me, they're special enough." Margaret sipped at the drink. "Are you going to tell them?"

Ciarán shook his head. "They have it hard enough, what with—"

"How can a soul be split that way? A Divinus soul in a mortal body? You're sure he's not—?"

"Be a lot easier if he was, but I think there's something in him. Robert's guarded, protective when it comes to Aaron, but I was able to see some things, look up some others. So many times he should have died but didn't, now I think there was more to it than Robert's desperate need to keep him alive."

"One soul in two bodies is cruel enough, but a Divinus and a mortal? Why would the Universe do that to them? When Aaron dies it will destroy Robert. His soul, their soul."

"Uathúil," Ciarán said. "Singular. They are one."

"You have a word for everything," Margaret laughed. "But yes. The sentiment is accurate. What about the bond?"

"I don't know if they want it."

"They will," she smiled. "They won't help but want it. And you're going to have to teach Robert how to let him go."

"That won't be easy," Ciarán said.

"Well he'll have to because if he doesn't then when Aaron dies so will a piece of him."

 

 

"So, how did you two meet?" Niamh asked, laughing when she saw Aaron's grin. "What?"

"How much would you judge me if I said he was with someone at the time?"

"You tempted him away?"

Aaron shook his head. "Full on affair. Not pretty, not good, lot of people got hurt because of us."

"And yet you didn't end it?"

"Couldn't. Didn't want to. There was something about him, about us… I didn't want to end things."

"Gramps said you two were intense."

"That's putting it mildly," Aaron said, ducking his head a little. "I love him more than anything."

"You two… You're unlike anything I've ever seen. The way you two love it's… huge."

"It feels huge." 

"I love Patrick, more than anything, but the more I talk to you or Robert about your relationship the more I think we got a raw deal!" she laughed softly. "No but… This is the stuff I grew reading stories about. The can't-get-enough, do-anything-for love. And you've got it with a Divinus."

"I never thought anyone would love me," Aaron admitted, "and certainly not the way that Robert does."

"Gramps thinks it's more than that," Niamh said. "I've only seen Margaret once before in my life, she's the person he calls when something's beyond him."

"What?"

"She's almost three hundred years old. Only person I know in Ireland who's got more experience and knowledge than Gramps."

"And she's interested in Robert? Why?"

"Don't know," Niamh admitted.

 

 

Elizabeth's pyre was losing none of its light and so it was easy to spot Robert and Aaron even as they stood on the edge of the crowd. It was easy to feel the love rolling off them, to sense the deepening connection that grew between them day after day. 

"There are no barriers between them," Margaret said as she felt Ciarán walk up to her.

"Thought you'd gone."

"Tonight was important to your Community," she said, "I wanted to be here."

"You should have said."

Margaret shook her head. "It wasn't about me. You're their leader, you knew her. I couldn't give them what you did."

"And what about them?" Ciarán asked, nodding towards the now-departing Robert and Aaron.

"They're the reason mortals believe in soul mates," Margaret said. "One soul, one heart, one life. Being together isn't optional."

"Uathúil."

"You know you sound like a bird when you say that," Margaret laughed. "Oo-hu?"

"Close enough," Ciarán laughed. "Three hundred years old and you lost your language."

"I couldn't. Not after…" Then her face changed and she looked down the driveway to where they were getting into their car, the waves of love and lust and promise in their wake. "I wonder if they're the same soul. It's rare enough, and being able to show Robert his paths so clearly…"

"You miss them?"

"You never stop missing your parents," she said. "No matter how long you live."

"Thank you for coming," Ciarán said.

"No, go raibh maith agat," she said. "I wouldn't have missed this for anything."

"Ever think we will get to the stage where this world doesn't surprise us?"

"I hope not," Margaret smiled. As the car pulled away the warmth faded away on the edge of their senses. "So long as a soul like theirs is around then it'll be a world worth living in." She smiled and nudged Ciarán gently. "You know, your Niamh asked me if I thought they were going to make it."

"What'd you tell her?"

"That they'd be forever."

**Author's Note:**

> Come play on Tumblr: I'm beautifulhigh


End file.
